One of the modes of resistance being suggested for the new Trump agenda is that the super wealthy on the left need to mount a defense of important institutions and civil liberties. These elites know what global destabilization will result if Trump’s wish list (policy might be too formal a word) is enacted. Threatening the well-being of billions of already vulnerable people isn’t good for business in the long run.
Consequently, the logic goes, while the Republican donors and shameless quislings circle Trump Tower, waiting for their cabinet positions or ambassadorships, Bloomberg, Soros, the Gateses and others should be creating an organized response.
But the irony is that we’ll be further undermining those already weakened democratic institutions if that’s the only method left with which to defend them. It can’t be that the only way to stop a bad oligarch is for ‘good’ oligarchs to take matters into their own hands. This is one of the reasons why there are very few response scenarios left that don’t take us down a very dark path.
One thing that could be done, however, is to target civic institutions that are already in private hands — like media companies — and strengthen them. Since the election, we’ve been watching the spectacle of chastened news organizations trying to redeem themselves by reporting the developments of the day in a less sensational way. Unfortunately, the end result has been the normalization of extremely abnormal events. When dispassionate analysis was warranted over the past eighteen months, we didn’t get it. Now that the danger is undeniable and imminent, the Times, the Post and the television networks are all behaving (in comparison) like models of journalistic restraint. Once again, they’re failing the American public.
Some privately owned media entity needs to step up and decide that it’s going to really embrace the new world order. Not by finally holding themselves to principles of sober journalism. But by acknowledging that there’s nothing to be gained by simply responsibly reporting the end of the West as we know it.
The Fourth Estate was once a champion and driver of liberal democracy; its foundations are set in the War of American Independence, in the French Revolution, in the expansion of literacy and the adoption of universal government funded education. There needs to be a reassertion of the historic role of the Fourth Estate. What if tomorrow, the New York Times or Bloomberg News declared that it was no longer going to pretend that certain behaviors, beliefs or policies should be treated as political positions within a normal partisan spectrum but, rather, that they constituted a threat to the nation and, by extension, to a broad, interdependent global community?
Certainly, there would be predictable, serious forms of financial punishment, not the least of which would be a loss of ad revenue. There would also be a loss of access to people in power, the White House press room, and every other official government mode of media engagement. The first of these is potentially fatal. But fearing the second is simply another way of holding on to the old world order. Media companies that want to be worthy of the label of journalism have to let go of any expectation that this regime is going to engage with them as journalists anyway. There is no shared truth anymore; there is no partnership. Currently, the access that journalists are afraid to lose would simply be access to lies. Not even just spin, but lies.
The real Fourth Estate will consist of those entities who realize journalism has to return to its roots. It must go back to a time when journalists helped to author nations and create vital civic institutions, not simply comment on them or be entertained by them.
Now, back to the money issue. Threats of boycotts, a rescinding of political access, and the loss of ad dollars, could weaken the New York Times or another privately owned entity to such an extent that it couldn’t even provide the meager level of critique it is managing now. And a revolt by shareholders is an added threat for publicly traded companies. But there are other obscenely rich people, like Bill Gates and George Soros who could step up and say that they’ll financially back them — absorb the risk. And then the Sulzbergers, Bloomberg, or some other entity could become the media voice that says No.
If history is anything to go by, it might be McClatchy/Knight Ridder who attempts to speak truth to power. They did so after 9/11 and in the lead-up to the Iraq War. At the time, they didn’t have a powerful enough voice to change the prevailing narrative; but now, with all of the traditional titans weakened by their enabling of Trump, perhaps it could.
Unfortunately, what seems to be happening currently is that men like Soros, Gates, and Bloomberg are more interested in financing their own targeted projects rather than understanding the need to shore up already existing civic institutions — like a free press. And it won’t really matter if the entire editorial staff at McClatchy, or the Times, or anywhere else would like to stand and fight. If the egos of rich men won’t allow them to come together in a common fight, then they are little better than the egomaniac they would be fighting.
Martini Wisdom 